British jihadists trained by al-Qaeda in Pakistan have been ordered to spread
their knowledge throughout Europe so fanatics can “whack” innocent people
here.

The terror group now favours training a few extremists and using them as emissaries to recruit other self-motivated cells to launch attacks in the West.

Leaders consider it is a safer tactic than people travelling out to their training camps in the ungoverned regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan and running the risk if being discovered by the security and intelligence services.

It is also further sign of the increasing weakness of al-Qaeda’s once traditional strongholds.

Details of the orders emerged after the ringleaders of a Birmingham terror cell were convicted on Thursday of planning a suicide bombing campaign in the UK.

Irfan Naseer, 31, Irfan Khalid, 27, and Ashik Ali, 27, now face life behind bars after plotting to kill hundreds of people with eight suicide bombers armed with guns.

Naseer and Khalid travelled out to Pakistan for training in making bombs and poisons and claimed they had the personal blessing of the now dead al-Qaeda number five, Abu Zaid al-Kuwaiti.

But in conversations secretly recorded by MI5 and the police, the pair also revealed the terror group’s desire to then pass on their expertise.

Naseer told members of his cell: ““AQ’s main aim is … the knowledge that they give us, we want more and more people (to) have (a) stance in Europe. So they can start whacking you there, yeah, do you understand?”

Khalid added: “So the thing is you gotta realise them guys yeah, they’ve told us that we want to spread this knowledge in Europe that people that they shouldn’t be you know coming up, basically here (to Pakistan).”

“They were saying we want to spread our knowledge to around here, said we want to spread our knowledge to Europe, now we’ve got enough people here.”

The terror case also highlighted flaws in the Government’s Prevent strategy, which is supposed to encourage communities to work with the police to highlight and stop the radicalisation of young people.

It emerged that some people in Birmingham knew Naseer had sent four other men to Pakistan for training but did not alert the police.

Youth workers in Birmingham yesterday admitted Prevent had failed in the parts of the city where it was needed most.

They also warned parents would not raise concerns because many were in denial that their children could be caught up in serious terror planning.